Only Shahdi Feroz had noticed Margo's brief distress. Her dark-eyed gaze rested squarely on Margo. Her brows had drawn down in visible concern. "Are you all right?" she asked softly, moving closer to touch Margo's arm.
"Yes," Margo lied, "I'm fine. Just cold. Come on, we'd better get moving."
She genuinely didn't have time to deal with that; certainly not here and now. She had a job to do. Remembering her mother—anything at all about her mother—was worse than useless. It was old news, ancient history. She didn't have time to shed any more tears or even to hate her parents for being what they'd been or doing what they'd done. If she hoped to work as an independent time scout one day, she had to keep herself focused on tomorrow. Not to mention today...
"Come on," she said roughly, all but dragging Guy Pendergast and Conroy Melvyn down the street. "We got a schedule, mates, let's ‘ave it away on our buttons, eh? Got a job waitin', so we ‘ave, time an' tide don't wait for nobody."
They were amenable to being dragged off, at least, clearly eager to get the story they'd come here for, rather than intriguing side stories. They reached the police mortuary in time, thank God, and contrived to position themselves outside where a whole bevy of London's native down-time reporters had gathered. Several of them added foul black cigar smoke to the stench wafting out of the mortuary. Margo took up a watchful stance where she could record the events across the street, yet keep a cautious eye on her charges, not to mention everyone else who'd joined the macabre vigil, waiting for word about the third woman hideously hacked to death in these streets since spring.
The native reporters, every one of them male, of course, were speculating about the dead woman, her origins, potential witnesses they'd already tracked down and plied with gin—"talked to fifty women, I tell you, fifty, and they all described the same man, big foreign looking bastard in a leather apron." Everyone wondered whether or not the killer might be caught soon, based on those so-called witness accounts. The man known as "Leather Apron," Margo knew, had been one of the early top suspects. The unfortunate John Pizer, a Polish boot finisher who also happened to be Jewish, and a genuinely innocent target of East End hatred and prejudice, would find himself in jail shortly.
Of course, he would soon afterward collect damages from the newspapers who had libeled him, since he'd been seen by several witnesses including a police constable, at the Shadwell dock fire during the time Polly Nichols had been so brutally killed. But this morning, nobody knew that yet—
A male scream of horror erupted from the mortuary across the road. "Dear God, oh, dear God, constable, come quick!"
Reporters broke and ran for the door, which slammed abruptly back against the sooty bricks. A shaken man in a shabby workhouse uniform appeared, stumbling as he reached the street. His face had washed a sickly grey. He gulped down air, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in a visible effort not to lose the meager contents of his stomach. Questions erupted from every side. The workhouse inmate shuddered, trying to find the words to describe what he'd just witnessed.
"Was ‘orrible," he said in a hoarse voice, "ripped ‘er open like a... a butchered side of beef... from ‘ere to ‘ere... dunno ‘ow many cuts, was ‘orrible, I tell you, couldn't stay an' look at ‘er poor belly all cut open..."
Word of the mutilations spread in a racing shockwave down the street. Women clutched at their throats, exclaiming in horror. Men stomped angrily across the pavement, cursing the news and demanding that something be done. A roar of angry voices surged from down the street. Then Margo and Doug Tanglewood and their mutual charges were buried alive by the mob which had, just minutes previously, been heckling the radical politicians running for council office. Angry teenage boys flung mud and rocks at the police mortuary. Older men shouted threats at the police officials inside. Margo was shoved and jostled by men taller and heavier than she was, all of them fighting for the best vantage points along the street. The sheer force of numbers thrust Margo and her charges apart.
"Hold onto one another!" Margo shouted at Shahdi Feroz. "Grab Dominica's arm—and I don't care what she says when you do it! Where's Doug?"
"Over there!" The wide-eyed scholar pointed.
Margo found the Time Tours guide trying to keep Guy Pendergast and Conroy Melvyn from being separated. Margo snagged the police inspector's coat sleeve, getting his shocked attention. "Hold onto Guy! Grab Doug Tanglewood's arm! We can't get separated in this mob! Follow me back!" She was already fighting her way back to the women and searching for Dr. Kostenka, who remained missing in the explosive crowd. She'd just reached Shahdi Feroz when new shouts erupted not four feet distant.
"Dirty little foreigner! It's one o' your kind done ‘er! That's wot they're sayin', a dirty little Jew wiv a leather apron!"
Margo thrust Shahdi Feroz at the Time Tours guide. "Get them out of here, Tanglewood! I've got a bad feeling that's Dr. Kostenka!"
She then shoved her way through the angry mob and found her final charge, just as she'd feared she would. Pavel Kostenka clutched at a bleeding lip and streaming nose, scholarly eyes wide and shocked. Angry men were shouting obscenities at him, most of them in Cockney the scholar clearly couldn't even comprehend.
Oh, God, here we go... . "Wot's this, then?" Margo shouted, facing down a thickset, ugly lout with blood on his knuckles. "You givin' me old man wot for, eh? I'll give you me Germans, I will, you touch ‘im again!" She lifted her own fist, threatening him as brazenly as she dared.
Laughter erupted, defusing the worst of the fury around them at the sight of a girl who barely topped five feet in her stockings squaring off with a man four times her size. Voices washed across her awareness, while she kept her wary attention on the man who'd punched Kostenka once already.
"Cheeky little begger, in't she?"
"Don't sound like no foreigner, neither."
"Let ‘er be, Ned, you might break ‘er back, just pokin' at ‘er!" This last to the giant who'd smashed his fist into Pavel Kostenka's face.
Ned, however, had his blood up, or maybe his gin, because he swung at Margo anyway. The blow didn't connect, of course. Which infuriated the burly Ned. He let out a roar like an enraged Kodiak grizzly and tried to close with her. Margo slid to one side in a swift Aikido move and assisted him on his way. Whereupon Ned was obliged to momentarily mimic the lowly fruit bat, flying airborne into the nearest belfry, that being the brick wall of the church across the street. Ned howled in outraged pain when he connected with a brutal thud. A roar of angry voices surged. So did the mob. A filthy lout in a ragged coat and battered cap took a swing at her. Margo ducked and sent him on his way. Then somebody else took offense at having his neighbor come careening head first into the crowd. Margo dodged and wove as fists swung like crazed axes in the hands of drunken lumberjacks. Then she grabbed Kostenka by the wrist and yelled, "Run, you bloody idiot!"
She had to drag him for two yards. Then he was running beside her, while Margo put to use every Aikido move Kit and Sven had ever drilled into her. Her wrists and arms ached, but she did clear a path out. The riot erupting behind them engulfed the entire street. Margo steered a course toward the spot where she'd last seen the other members of her little team. She found them, wide-eyed in naked shock, near the edge of the crowd. Doug Tanglewood had wisely dragged them clear as soon as she'd yelled at him to do so.
"Dr. Kostenka!" Shahdi Feroz cried. "You're injured!"
He was snuffling blood back into his sinuses. Margo hauled a handkerchief out of one pocket and thrust it into his hand. "Come on, let's clear out of here. We got what we came for. Pack this into your nostrils, hold it tight. Come on!" That, to Guy Pendergast, who was still intent on filming the riot with his hidden camera. "If we get to the Whitechapel Working Lads' Institute now, we can scramble for the best seats at the inquest."